Establishing a connection between SAP SRM and MM

Question

Dear All,
I am working  for a multi-national company  and now we are thinking to implement SAP SRM  but I have some questions about  communication between SAP MM and SRM. Firstly I want  so share with you our as-is status and then my doubts and question that I have.
In our case we have two different locationed organizations which are using different version of SAP system and SAP MM. In this  two sap system mostly codes are  and descriptions are different for  all materials and  now we want  gather all data and we want to have  one global code system and (local code also will remain). I mean we want  to call same materials with one global unique code instead of two different codes. We  are thinking to implement  something like coding center that will take local master data from local organization then will assign global code, update table then  with somehow will update SAP SRM.
For example:
We have local  master data on R/3 is maintained manually by local user and net item is created locally each country by local user.Coding center will be aware of new creation by mail, automatically. Coding center will update table (adding a new row for each new item) on translator (tool for assigning global code for materials) assign to each new item a global code and category and in this way SRM will be updated automatically based on translator.
I am thinking to develeop a tool (excel,access… etc.) that will take new item creation manually or auto from local organization  then will assign a global code and category then will update SAP SRM automatically
Regarding to  tool I have some questions:
1)     which are the standard communication channel between R/3 and SRM or How  they can speak with each other ?
2)     Is there any standart batch file (BI or BAPI)  to be able to perform this.Is it possible to develop tool using excel or access …etc. which will manage coding task.
3)     When we are trasferring for the first time Master Data from MM to SRM is there any standard transaction?
4)     how the two MD are aligned (i.e. what if a new item is created or modified on MM)?
5)     standard program (transaction) for aligning  available ?
6)     ) how this process can be triggered (scheduled using SAP scheduler, event or user driven)
7)     Where the translator  (tool) should be (R/3 local, SRM, BW, other) --> Enrichment table
8)     How we can build the communication transaction?
Thank you very much
Any comments and answers will appreciated and rewarded
Regards,

Answer 1

Hi,
Have you considered using CCM. You generally use an industry standard code (perhaps UNSPSC) in CCM as your vendors would all have different number (similar to your scenario). CCM is a plug-in to SRM, supplied by SAP.
The authoring tool is where you can enrich your catalogue, and have approval dependant on rules that you setup. In your case you would possibly have a catalogue per locationed organisation (or R/3 system). These would then be mapped to a master catalogue, and assigned to users as views. This tool is a BSP on SRM. You could also upload these catalogues from Excel (as a CSV) or through XI as XML. We use the automatic transfer of materials from R3 and then there is a report in SRM to feed that through to the catalogue.
The only thing that needs to be thought through is how you feed the selected catalogue item back to the differing R3 systems, but this shouldn't be a stumbling point.
Cheers
Rob